Cesar Chavez

Hello, my name is Cesar Chavez, and I want to share my story with you. I was born on a sunny day, March 31st, 1927, in Arizona. My family had a big ranch filled with animals and crops. It was a happy place. My mom and dad taught me to love nature and the importance of working hard. I loved helping on our ranch, feeling the warm dirt in my hands and watching the plants grow tall. But when I was about ten years old, a very difficult time called the Great Depression happened. It was like a big, sad cloud that covered the whole country. Because of it, my family lost our beautiful ranch. We had to pack up all of our things and say goodbye to the only home I had ever known. It was one of the saddest days of my life, but my family stuck together, and we knew we had to be brave.

After we lost our home, we became migrant farmworkers. That meant we traveled from farm to farm, looking for work picking fruits and vegetables. It was a very hard life. We never stayed in one place for long, which meant I had to change schools all the time. Can you imagine going to more than 30 different schools. It was tricky to make new friends. The work in the fields was even harder. I would spend all day under the hot sun, my back would ache, and my hands would get sore. We worked for very little money, and I saw that my family and many other families were not treated fairly. The farm owners didn't always give us clean water to drink or a safe place to rest. Seeing this made a fire grow in my heart. I said to myself, 'This isn't right. Someone has to help make things better for these hardworking people.'

I decided that 'someone' would be me. I knew I couldn't do it alone, so I started talking to other farmworkers. I met a wonderful and smart friend named Dolores Huerta, who felt the same way I did. Together, in 1962, we started a group to help farmworkers. We called it the National Farm Workers Association. Our goal was simple: we wanted workers to have fair pay for their hard work and to be safe while they did it. We didn't use anger or fighting. Instead, we used peaceful ideas. We organized marches where we walked for miles to show everyone how much we cared. We also started something called a boycott. We asked people all over the country to stop buying grapes until the farm owners agreed to treat the workers better. It worked. My journey showed me that even when a problem seems as big as a mountain, you can move it if enough people join together with peaceful hearts and a powerful voice.